THE baton is being passed in the Davies family. On Sunday, Barry will be commentating on the closing ceremony at the Olympics, the last before his BBC contract ends, just as his daughter, Giselle, will end her first Games as the director of communications for the IOC.
If Barry is much better known in Great Britain from his commentating over ten successive Summer Olympics and innumerable other sports events, Giselle is more prominent in other countries. She is the public face of a body that oversees the Games and is the target for questioning — and occasionally criticism — from the 20,000 media personnel in Athens. “It is really wonderful that I am now sometimes being introduced to people as Giselle’s father, rather than she being presented as my daughter,” Barry said.
The love of the Olympic ideal is profound in the family, with Barry insisting that the Games are far more than world championships in 28 leading sports. He says that it is not just the “interweaving” between the different sports, with competitors of different sizes, shapes, religions and nationalities mingling in the Olympic Village. “I also believe in the sense of humanity and fair play, ” he said. “I was absolutely appalled by the positive drugs test on the winner of the women’s shot in an event which took place at Olympia.” For him, it was a desecration of the stadium used for the Ancient Olympics.
As a full-time professional commentator, an increasingly rare species in television sport, he is the natural selection by the BBC for the ceremonies. Barry, 66, said of the opening extravaganza, which drew a British audience of 10.2 million: “The Greeks did it just right. The protocol was a distinct part of the event and the organisers rightly used the rest to celebrate the culture of the city and country staging the Olympic Games.”
Will he be nervous after all these years? “Not nervous exactly. But there will be adrenalin going and you must have adrenalin to produce a good performance.”
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He first covered the Olympics for ITV in Mexico in 1968. Sport was always a central feature at home, even allowing for his constant attendance at sports events. Giselle competed at gymnastics to Southern Area Championships level and her younger brother, Mark, coxed the Goldie rowing crew for Cambridge University and is now the director of communications for Betfair.
After reading geography and economics at Cambridge, Giselle, 35, worked on events such as the Boat Race and the Formula One World Championship for Jordan before joining the IOC in 2002. With two tiny mobile phones constantly at her ears, she has to communicate with thousands of journalists during the Summer and Winter Games, the biennial zenith of her working life.
Like a competitor, she has to reach a peak at the Games. When the story broke of Konstantinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou, the Greek sprinters, being unavailable to give a urine sample, it was she who had to field the questions.
“There are moments which are pretty exhausting,” she said. “What I have to concentrate on is getting through every day and to deal with each situation as it arises. The Olympics are a huge international event. This first came home to me when I went to my first big meeting in Asia and saw all the flags there of the different countries. The only other place where you would see all of them together would be United Nations in New York.”